简介： 贝克休斯 将在加拿大启动两个新型工厂，更好的服务北加拿大油砂和油田公司； FMC技术公司 最近在休斯顿宣布成立新的全球技术中心，包括核心技术团队研发等；斯伦贝谢/巴西石油以及里约热内卢联邦大学签署合作协议，共同建设位于大学技术园区的盐下油藏研究中心。

Several major oilfield technology companies have recently announced the opening of new research centers around the world, indicating an optimistic outlook for E&P activities in the coming year.

Baker Hughes
Baker Hughes will open two facilities in Canada to better serve operators in the oil sands and other northern Canadian oil fields. The infrastructure expansion will include a purpose-built oilfield chemicals plant in Leduc and a multi-discipline operations center in Fort McMurray.

The 41,000-sq ft Leduc chemical plant, which opened 9 September, houses an oil sands laboratory, a water-based blending vessel, a mixer for sensitive chemicals, an 18-tank storage farm with rail access, and warehouse space. The facility has water treating and fluid separation chemical production capabilities to support heavy oil and oil-sands mining and steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) projects. Baker Hughes states that this new plant will provide the necessary production and storage capacity to meet the target of a minimum of 30 days of materials in Leduc and Fort McMurray at all times. The Leduc chemical facility is engineered to reduce process waste by more than 10% compared to conventional plants. The company says that the facility reflects its extensive planning for spill control, containment, and emergency preparedness.

The Baker Hughes operations center in Fort McMurray is set to open 1 October and will provide dedicated warehouse and staging areas to support oil sands projects in the Fort McMurray area. The multi-purpose center will house a full range of Baker Hughes products and services, including oilfield chemicals, artificial lift systems, and formation evaluation services.

“With the opening of our state-of-the-art blending plant in Leduc and our purpose-built facility in Fort McMurray, Baker Hughes Canada is uniquely capable of satisfying the requirements of our oil sands customers,” said Mike Davis, president of Baker Hughes in Canada. “By shortening the supply and value delivery chains and supporting operators with world class laboratory, manufacturing, and workshop facilities, we are able to deliver solutions customized to our client’s individual needs – saving them time and money.”

FMC Technologies
With a goal of delivering the next generation of subsea solutions, FMC Technologies has recently announced the opening of a new Global Technology Center on its Houston campus. Housing product technical management teams and core technology groups from various disciplines, the center will reportedly enhance the company’s ability to develop innovative equipment and services for customers worldwide.

The facility provides engineers, designers, metallurgists and materials scientists, and chemists with tools designed to strengthen global collaboration, enhance communication and productivity, and increase efficiency, the company states. To support teamwork and creativity among engineers, the center has several state-of-the-art videoconferencing suites to connect teams around the globe, as well as visualization rooms equipped with large, high-definition monitors to display 3D animations and designs. The building also houses a new training center where FMC will strengthen its existing engineering talent and accelerate the development of new engineers.

FMC aims to use this center as a support hub to develop the evolving technologies necessary to produce hydrocarbons from high pressure/high temperature (HP/HT) reservoirs and ultra-deepwater fields. In addition, the center will serve as FMC’s global hub for the development of concepts and hardware that can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership of onshore, offshore, and subsea fields during their producing life.

“It’s an important step that FMC has taken to invest in the future through continued technology development,” said Brad Beitler, director of technology for FMC’s Energy Production Systems. “Developing our products and systems with direct input from our customers has been, and will continue to be, one of the keys to our success.”

Schlumberger/Petrobras
As part of a technological cooperation agreement between Petrobras, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and Schlumberger, a contract was recently signed for the construction of an international research center for pre-salt technologies. The center will be built in an 8 000 m2 area in the UFRJ’s Technological Park.

Brazil’s pre-salt region, which is located approximately 170 miles off the coast of Brazil in deep and ultradeep waters in the Atlantic Ocean, holds oil deposits beneath approximately 3 000 m of sand and rock and an additional salt layer that reaches thicknesses of more than 2 000 m in places. This depth and complexity of the formation above the reservoir make extraction challenging.

Petrobras states that bringing this center to Brazil is part of a strategy to advance the formation of a cutting-edge technological park in the country that involves the synergy of three elements: the increase in the experimental infrastructure of Petrobras itself; investments in Brazilian universities and research institutes to build new laboratories that comply with international standards of excellence; and attracting strategic Petrobras suppliers to take part in activities aimed at developing technology.

Schlumberger will use this research center to focus on developing new technologies for the Brazilian oil and gas industry. In particular, the company will focus its activities in three main areas:

Developing geosciences software for the exploration and production sector
Creating new technologies to face the challenges of producing and characterizing reservoirs in the pre-salt
Building a center of excellence in geophysical processing and interpretation, which will also encompass 4D and seismic and electromagnetic measurement technologies.
To Mauricio Guedes, the director of UFRJ’s Technological Park, the arrival of a multinational partner adds greater value to the research, development, and innovation network located on the university campus. In addition to solutions to face the technological challenges brought on by the pre-salt, major opportunities will be generated for smaller technologically-based outfits and for further academic research at the university.

Schlumberger’s Chief Executive Officer for Latin America, Cesar Jaime, emphasized that Brazil was chosen from among other countries “on account of the highly-qualified professional talent coming from renowned universities, because of the great availability of suppliers of cutting-edge technology, and due to the challenges introduced by the reservoirs located in the pre-salt.”